Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl’s Top 5 Street Kabob Recipes

Off the Menu with Dara can be heard every Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon on News Radio 830 WCCO! See all of Mpls. St.Paul Magazine’s Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl’s Top 5 lists here!

It’s the middle of winter, and we’re getting bored with the same-old-same-old, right? How about mixing it up with a little food-on-a-stick, winter style? I’m talking kabobs—marinated meat, on a stick, grilled. Kabobs are big worldwide, and they’re thrifty too—you never make kabobs out of the prestige cuts, you make them from the lesser bits. And they’re good!

Traditional, classic Japanese way of making a drinking snack. Andrew Zimmern has a great recipe on Food & Wine which uses lots of green scallions and squares of chicken thighs. It’s a beautiful recipe and good for even non-adventurous groups. Serve with rice, Japanese beer or sake, and a big salad.

For those of you who don’t eat meat but are bored with tofu, maybe a tempeh kebab will do the trick? Tempeh is a fermented soybean product like tofu, but it’s made differently and comes out with a texture that’s almost meaty—and that keeps it on a skewer!

The classic Greek dish of pork souvlaki couldn’t be easier. You just buy a pork shoulder, cube it up, marinate it, and you’re on your way to a restaurant-quality dish fit to feed a crowd. Either buy tzatziki ready-made from the co-ops (Gardens of Salonica has a great one) or throw together your own: cucumber, mint, and yogurt sauce. Oil pita breads and grill them too. Onion slices in a grill pan add crunch. If you do this you will be so popular.

Ground lamb and beef kabobs are phenomenally popular throughout India, the Middle East, and Turkey. Raghavan Iyer, the fantastic Minnesotan cooking teacher and cookbook author, has a super-simple Mumbai street-food version with all of 5 ingredients and a little salt—this is so good.

I love Epicurious’ tacos al pastor marinade. It’s made with pineapple and chili, it’s just easy and good. Grill some pineapple slices too, and use store-bought or your home-made salsa. Don’t forget, you can make a pitcher of margaritas, and corn tortillas warmed up directly over coals are the best.